I'm definitely a fan of Royal Oak briquettes as far as the quality of the product. I really do not like the shape they put on the briquettes, though. If you're just dumping them in a pile on your grill, then they're great. But if you're trying to build a charcoal fuse/snake, the ridges on the briquettes make it hard to get them to lean against each other. I finally just started alternating the briquette orientation so that the ridges were perpendicular to each other, like this:
It takes some time to assemble, but you can get a lot of briquettes into a fuse/snake. So you can get some insanely long burns. But the "pillow" shape of, say, Stubbs briquettes is far easier to work with.
And yet I just purchased more Royal Oak yesterday...and I will probably get more tomorrow before the sale goes off!